Other Worlds Than These
by Farky-fark and the Munky Bunch
Summary: When Rhys and Fiona entered the Vault, they expected to find riches beyond their wildest dreams. What they didn't expect was to end up in an abandoned subway tunnel beneath the New York City streets. Nor did Eddie Dean, Susannah Holmes, or Jake Chambers know about the existence of a world named Pandora...


**A/N:** So...this is new. And at the same time, a long time coming. This cross-over is finally a collaboration between my sister ( **GrowlingPeanut** ) and I, which we have wanted to do for pretty much forever. We're both huge fans of Telltale's _Tales from the Borderlands_ , and the _Borderlands_ series as a whole, and Stephen King's _Dark Tower_ novels are some of the most amazing books I have ever read. Coincidentally, the ending of _Tales_ happened to fit nicely with the general idea of the _Dark Tower_ series, and as such...this was born. This is just a little intro chapter to get things started off, but I think we're gonna try to have the first set of actual chapters out within the next week or two. She's writing Rhys and Fiona in New York, and I'm writing Eddie, Susannah, and Jake in Pandora, so we'll each be in charge of those respective chapters, but will obviously be working on the whole thing together. So...yup. Hope you like it!

 **Disclaimer:** Everything belongs to Gearbox, Telltale, 2K, and Stephen King.

* * *

 _The Vault of the Traveler fled across the universe and the adventurers followed... Dramatic, eh? You know what they say about fate...when it comes, it comes like the wind... Ech, who cares, right?_ You _want to hear about our unlikely heroes. Well, none of them had planned, or even expected, what was about to be the single most important experience...of their_ entire _lives._

* * *

The first thing Rhys felt was pain. His head was in pain, his back was in pain, his arm, his legs... "Oh..." He sat up, swearing through clenched teeth. "Fucking...piece of...oh, _God_ , that hurt... Fiona?"

Silence.

He forced his eyes open and looked around. "Fi..." Her name died on his lips as he saw her lying next to him. Her hat was crumpled a few feet away and there was a thin trail of blood running out of the corner of her mouth. "No...no no no no no. Fiona!?" He scrambled over to her, despite all of his muscles screaming at him to stop. "Fiona...hey...Fi? You've gotta..." The lump rising in his throat kept him from finishing the sentence, and he swallowed hard, wiping the blood away from her mouth with shaking fingers. "You can't...God...not after everything we just..."

He sat back on his heels, fists tight, blinking away the heat prickling behind his eyes. If tears hadn't worked for Sasha, they wouldn't work for Fiona. But they fell anyway as he brushed her hair out of her face and leaned closer. "I know you understood what I meant," he whispered. She had. Hadn't she? He couldn't have _imagined_ all the affection in her eyes as they'd walked up those ethereal stairs. She had to have felt _something_.

He was just centimeters away from pressing his lips to her own in some final declaration of love when she coughed, spraying blood all over his mouth before he could react. But his brain kicked into gear a second later and he sat up, relief flooding through him. "Fiona...oh thank God. I thought you—"

With a pained moan, Fiona rolled over, still coughing, and braced her hands on the crumbling concrete beneath them.

Rhys' relief was momentarily quelled by the sight of the blood that continued to leave her mouth as she coughed. "Fi...?" He absently wiped off his face and leaned closer.

She shook her head and spit a glob of red onto the ground before struggling to sit up.

On impulse, Rhys reached out for her arm and helped pull her upright. "You're okay, right? With all the blood, I..."

She snorted and spat again, cracking a small smile. "I didn't come all this way to open a Vault and then die."

He nodded emphatically, studying her face as she looked around.

"I just bit my tongue...on impact," her voice petered out. "...Rhys?"

"Huh?"

"Have you...looked around...?"

"No, I was—"

"Look."

Slowly, he turned, taking in the surroundings. There was stone. Everywhere. But not the etched, glowing ruins of the Vault. Concrete. Chipping and green with moss and algae. He was vaguely aware of the sound of dripping water somewhere nearby and the air smelled musty, like it hadn't been circulated in decades. "Wh..."

Fiona grunted, rising unsteadily to her feet, forcing Rhys to let go of her arm. She took a few tentative steps toward her hat, stooping to pick it up.

"We...aren't...this isn't the—"

She shushed him.

He frowned. Maybe his ECHO-eye could— "Uh...Fiona...?" He reached up to his face. Yeah, his eye was still there... "My ECHO-eye's not working."

She squinted at him. "It's glowing, so it must be."

"But I'm not...nothing's..."

"Just...keep trying. Let's look around."

"Well, I would, but—"

Fiona nailed him with a glare. "Help me or shut up. Or both."

He ground his teeth and stood up, staggering a little as a wave of pain coursed down his spine. "This...isn't how Vaults...are supposed to work," he panted, limping towards Fiona. "We're supposed to find some treasure...and live comfortably for the rest of our lives, not—"

"Hey...hey, look at this." Fiona beckoned him over to the closest wall. "Something's engraved here. It's…" she brushed her fingers over it, clearing away the moss. "It's writing. In...English, thankfully."

Rhys leaned against the wall beside her, tilting his head back and shutting his eyes. He still hurt. Everywhere. "What's it say?"

"It says…" she was quiet for a moment. "New York City...Track 19."

A few beats of silence passed before Rhys said what they were both thinking. "What the hell?"

* * *

At some point in their life, everyone has that dream. The one where you're falling. One second, everything is real. You don't even know that you're in a dream because you're just on your way to work, or you're picking up a hotdog from that snack bar in the main terminal of JFK.

The next moment, you're falling. From what and to where only God knows, but it's then that you jerk awake, heart racing, and realize that it was all dream.

Until it isn't. For Eddie Dean, nothing felt more real than stepping between the doors of the New York subway and then suddenly he was falling, and just when he thought that he had to wake up, he hit the ground—hard—a cloud of dust billowing up around him. When he was able to move again, he rolled onto his back, letting out a feeble moan and shutting his eyes against the harsh glare of the sun. "What the fuck just happened...?"

"Watch your language, sugar. We've got a kid with us too."

Eddie frowned deeply and cracked an eye open to see a young black woman sitting a few feet away, her hand over her eyes as she scanned the horizon.

"It's alright. I've heard worse."

And to his right, a boy, already standing, scuffing his feet in the sand.

He had to say, he much preferred the kind of dreams he had about that girl across the hall with the big tits, even if this strange woman _was_ attractive. Closing his eyes again, he pinched his forearm and winced at the resulting sting. When he repeated the action, the woman spoke again.

"It's no use. We both tried it too before you came around. This ain't a dream, white boy."

"Then where the hell are we, besides the dusty ass crack of nowhere?"

"It kinda looks like New Mexico," the boy piped up, shoving his hands deep in the pockets of his worn jeans. "I've seen pictures before."

"New Mexico?" Eddie shook his head and groaned, sitting up. What he wouldn't give for a few grams of China White right about now. "Listen, kid, I'm from New _York..._ I don't know what the hell happened, but I was just getting—"

"—on the subway."

They all looked at each other in disbelief, an oppressive silence falling over them.

"You boys weren't on track 19 were you?"

Eddie and the boy both shook their heads before exchanging a puzzled glance. "Track 19 was closed down in '65. It's been abandoned for over 20 years."

"Twenty?"

"Abandoned?"

Another silence fell, heavy with the questions that none of them dared to ask. In the end, it was the youngest of the group that spoke up.

"What year did you come from?"

Eddie ran a hand back through his hair and chewed absently on his thumbnail. "1987."

"'64," the woman supplied, finally turning away from the horizon. For the first time, Eddie noticed that her legs ended before her knees.

"'77."

"Well…" Eddie finally said, hooking his thumbs through his belt loops, "Guess we know where we are now. We've all died and we're in a fucking time traveling hell. Maybe the New York subway was just the highway. _Livin' easy, lovin' free, season ticket on a one way ride...!_ "

"Quit your noise," the woman snapped impatiently, her hand slapping across his mouth mid-verse. "We aren't alone anymore."

* * *

"Dammit, August!" Sasha reached out to slap his hand away from the shiny pistol in her belt. "You have your own!"

August groaned in frustration, rolling his eyes. "Yeah, and so do _you_. But it's an SMG. Whaddaya want with a pistol? It ain't your style."

Sasha frowned down at the gun. "I...it's...it's unique! You never know when you might—"

A sharp crack drowned out the remainder of her sentence, echoing off the walls of the canyon. A white-hot flash of light followed not a second later.

Vaughn was the first to recover. And to notice what none of the others had. "Uh..." He squinted at the far end of the canyon, trying to see around the spots dancing across his eyes. "Hey...the Vault's gone, you guys."

Sasha whipped around, the rare pistol at her side momentarily forgotten. "Fiona?!" Before Vaughn could stop her, she'd broken into a flat-out sprint across the sand. August followed close behind, hand on his own gun.

Vaughn watched the two of them for a moment before realizing he hadn't seen Fiona _or_ Rhys since the scramble for the loot had ended… Best case scenario, they were behind a boulder, releasing all that stupid pent-up sexual tension. Worst case scenario...they had disappeared with the Vault. He wasn't sure which option he wanted to confirm. But he started jogging off in the direction Sasha and August had gone, an uncomfortable knot beginning to tighten in his stomach.

As he neared, he began to make out shapes in the brown haze. He could see...August...and Sasha. Standing together, staring at… He slowed to a stop. Were those…? No. That was impossible. Only Rhys and Fiona had… Forcing his legs into motion again, he sprinted the rest of the distance.

"...tellin' me you got no idea what a fuckin' Vault is? What is this bullshit?"

"It had to be what you came out of," Sasha reasoned, elbowing August with a glare. "There was one right here just a few minutes ago—"

"Look, honey, you and the freckled lollipop with the _gun_ in my face _obviously_ aren't listening. We don't know what the _fuck_ you're talking about!"

Vaughn tuned out the bickering. Rhys and Fiona were gone. They had stepped into the Vault...and the Vault had vanished. For all he knew, they were dead, lost somewhere in the vacuum of...wherever Vaults came from. ...and instead of celebrating a hard-earned victory, they were left dealing with three total strangers. Strangers who were just as confused as the rest of them.


End file.
